Grayblue
by Chaos Redacted
Summary: "Everything always seems to end in flames." Chell is again forced to run the gauntlet, though now GLaDOS must deal with Caroline's memories. Meanwhile, Rattmann recounts Aperture's deeper pasts, and must help Chell escape before it all spirals into fire.
1. Chapter One: The Rehabilitation

_**Portal and all characters from it belong to Valve**_

_**Please please please check out the original version here (minus the spaces): the-eradication. blogspot. com/2011/12/chapter-one-rehabilitation. html **_

_**It includes chapter illustrations and has the original formatting, which in my opinion looks much better.**_

_**Anyway, this continues directly after the events of Portal 2, so yes there will be spoilers.**_

_**Btw, I updated this quite a bit.  
><strong>_

...

_Lost in that current of memories_

_Treading the edges of a world never found_

_On the brink of a void _

_Where the sound of your voice will never be heard _

...

There was no convenient escape lift to be activated with a simple push of a button or pull of a lever. There were no bombs or bullets with which to forcefully extricate yourself from this prison. There was no desperately beating at the walls, crying murder, or tearfully clawing at the unyielding prison bars to leave.

There was no escaping. Entering was a one-way voyage, unless you considered death as a round-trip destination.

She knew this, knew it from the moment that fiery casket that _she_ had prepared for her failed to entomb her as _she_ wished to orchestrate.

Aperture had taught her so much: self-discipline, betrayal, and a sense of being impervious to twisted surprises. So the very second her feet left the inaptly named "escape lift", she knew that she had stumbled onto yet another trap or potential deathbed.

In her view, the Aperture Science facility was quite reminiscent of a spoiled child. It was greedy, none too polite, and once it had what it wanted, it didn't let go.

Chell surveyed her new surroundings, her eyes squinting to adjust to the shift in light. A bright orb dangling from the ceiling cut harsh light onto the floor, causing the gently quivering stalks of some buttery-yellow foliage to sparkle brightly. She peered into the deep blue of the walls, its wintry fringes making her heart pound faster. What sort of alien room was this?

Her fingers flew to the singed surface of the companion cube, her skin tingling upon contact with its blackened edges. She blew some frayed bits of ashes off of it, watching it swirl onto the corrugated ridges of the metal shack's door.

How she almost missed the sleek gray colors of the test chambers, with its gentle lighting and aesthetically pleasing hue. Even the eerie shadows of Aperture's older sections were much more preferable to the harshness enclosed within these walls.

Chell took a second look around, and some nagging suggestion finally sunk in. Was this… the outside world? A faint memory seemed to tug on her. Yes, it certainly looked like the world above. But… was it really?

She took a few experimental steps into the vegetation, her fingers winding through the stalks. She simply began to walk in no general direction, letting her feet do the talking and allowing her mind to do the roaming. Soon, her pace quickened, and she began to run freely.

Look to the left—! To the right—! Maybe _she_ wasn't so bad after all. She was—free—

Abruptly, Chell smacked into something obstructing her path. Her knees crumpled, and she desperately tried to move her hands before her to heave herself up. But… Her hands could only scrape at a wall. This was—It was all a—lie—

"**Welcome to the Aperture Science Test Subject Rehabilitation Center. I'm sure you've noticed you're not exactly where you thought you were, unless your brain really has been damaged from all that fat weighing it down. Or maybe you're just stupid.**"

She thought she was prepared, thought she could withstand anything…

"**As amusing as it was to watch you run in circles as fast as your pudgy legs could take you, we have work to do.**"

A creaking noise alerted her. She glanced up to see a glinting metal arm reaching to grab her. She remained still. Resistance was, of course, futile. Where was there to go?

"**Now get back into the lift. Don't be so hasty to think you're done. As one of your ridiculous human ancestors once said, don't count, or in your case, smash, your chicken eggs before they hatch. You murderer.**"

What a surprise.

It rather reminded her of when _he_ had abandoned her and turned against her. When that little, bubbly personality sphere who called himself Wheatley became the monster she should have known he would become.

It was sad really, that she had again ridden the wave of false hope only to crash when that hope's true nature revealed itself. And to think she nearly trusted _her_. Maybe she really was brain damaged. Or maybe she was just desperate to cling onto anything that promised to grant her freedom.

"**You know when I said I wanted you gone? I lied. So get back into the lift, **_**now**_**. This place isn't real anyway. It's just something we use when we want to release our test subjects back into the real world. So congratulations on being the first to ever see it.**"

The companion cube was gone. Disintegrated, no doubt. It was rather silly, really, to think that the homicidal supercomputer expected her to form some sort of attachment to such an object.

Chell calmly swung the shack's door open and stepped over the threshold. A carefully obscured camera focused on her as she entered, and she unknowingly gazed straight into it.

...

Gray-blue.

She watched as the child laughed, the sun catching her bright eyes and making them dance with color. The irises appeared bluer under natural light as if reflecting the sky itself, but she knew they were as gray as the speckled feathers of the snowy owl perched upon the branch above.

Her beautiful daughter, grasping the icy coat of a man. His face, its features sharp and twisted, reciprocated the girl's jovial nature. They looked like the perfect family in a picturesque, winter scene. But the man was not her father, and the girl did not know her mother.

She could only watch and smile sadly as she sat in her car, alone. The urge to simply watch the two play was strong, but the urge to do science was stronger.

...

On the outside, the AI remained perfectly calm as she watched Chell enter the lift. On the inside, however, her rage was reaching melting point.

Caroline was a—a curse. How could she do science, when that… that monster of a woman was hanging onto her every action, shoving pitiful human memories into her intelligent body at every whim. Just the mere sight of gray-blue could trigger such a reaction—!

No matter. She would simply have to learn to control that human compartment of herself. She had Chell just where she needed her. Once Chell performed one last task for her, her life was both expendable and easily so.

It would be too easy. And she liked that. She enjoyed the thought of how she could finally kill with ease and convenience. A proper reward for a bout of science well done.

Only one minor detail disturbed her. How would she deliver the final blow of death when… When she had never killed a human before?

...

_**Please do review! Would be very much appreciated!Also, i-game GLaDOS is never referred to verbally so I doubt Chell knows she even has a name. She will be referred to as 'her' and 'she' a lot depending on whose perspective it is, just to warn you.** _


	2. Chapter Two: The ID Sphere

_**Portal and all its characters belong to Valve  
><strong>_

_**Updated this! The beginning's a bit slow but it'll gradually build up. And also, thanks so much for reading and reviewing the previous chapter!  
><strong>_

_**Better version of this chapter with chapter image and original formatting (minus spaces):**_

_**the-eradication. blogspot. com/2011/12/chapter-two-intelligence-dampening. html**_

...

_You_

_You are something else entirely_

_You have the strength_

_The strength to survive_

_And when everyone falls_

_You will rise _

...

Trapped between walls that suffocated the body. Desperately searching every little inch of the surrounding area, if only for some hope that you were not alone.

Aperture was built as a foundation to further the cause of science, and essentially, the cause of the human race. Gears whirring, electricity humming… You only had to sniff the hydrogen peroxide-tinted air to smell the progress of science.

And yet, something spoiled its success. The rare rotten apple amongst a truckload of fruit. Somewhere, somehow, something had gone wrong: terribly, tragically wrong. And now, because of that one slip of human error, Aperture collapsed onto itself, forever to be a forgotten shrine honoring those who gave their lives for something doomed from the start.

Without even knowing this section of Aperture's history, Chell knew how those people – those martyrs – felt. She knew isolation and betrayal and now, watching the remnants of the turret choir float past her elevator, knew something far worse.

It was some horrific, out-of-world massacre. Pieces of turrets scattered over their platforms, their optics somehow still glowing dimly. Red light spilling over the walls and ceiling like blood. It was as if they had been disassembled, but in a way to still allow them to function, but barely.

Chell pressed her face against the glass of the lift, her mind screaming: _why?_ She knew the sentry turrets' primary objective was to shoot everyone on sight, but she couldn't help but feel they didn't want that. Still, it didn't make sense to leave them strewn all over the place, like dirty animals whose limbs had been mercilessly amputated. Maybe they couldn't feel physical pain, but she was certain they felt _something _right now.

This was _her_ sick way of warning her against refusal to comply, wasn't it? She didn't know. She only knew that she wished the lift would hurry. She was walled in her own little prison now; it was only mercy that quieted the chipper, infantile voices of the turrets.

"**Whyyy?**"

A strange and soft voice could barely be heard through the thick glass of the elevator. Even with the humming of the lift's descent, the sound was still audible. Unfortunately.

"**I don't blame you.**"

After another eternity, the lift shuddered to a stop. The blistered doors slid open to allow Chell passage through them. She stepped through and peered around. Not surprisingly, it wasn't _her_ lair she had arrived at. She supposed the maniacal supercomputer had learned _not_ to let her in again.

Instead, she beheld a simple corridor with a flickering panel at the very end. She began to walk, listening to her footfalls clicking along the cracked, dirt-encrusted floor.

"**You know, I learned something after you tried to kill me twice. I learned you can't be trusted. So I'm not giving you that dual portal device again. You did fling it away into space anyway, so I figure you don't care.**"

Chell ignored the mechanical voice and concentrated on preparing herself for what was sure to be another test chamber.

She was right. At the end of the corridor, the familiar introductory panel clearly announced she was about to enter Test Chamber 23. Below the mess of perfectly shaped rectangles were the squares indicating what she would encounter in the chamber. They included an icon of a cube preceded by a down arrow and the crude depiction of a person being hit by a falling cube. Oh good. Something simple to start things off.

She turned to her left, and the entrance doors slid open to reveal a blank room covered only with portal surfaces. She entered cautiously, peering around the chamber, waiting for a portal to open. None did.

"**Look at you. Helpless. Defenseless. Hopeless. Trapped without your precious portal device. Here, let me help you.**"

Without a sound, the panel she was standing cautiously on gave way, making her plummet down to whatever lay below. As a reflex, she desperately twisted her right hand before realizing she was no longer in possession of her handy portal device, leaving her at the mercy of whatever _she_ was planning.

Knowing it was foolish but wanting to be able to anticipate a possible escape route, she chanced a glance at what was rushing up to meet her. To her dismay, a current of acid water swirled beneath her. All around her, the gloom of the decay and rubble from the deteriorating sections of the old Aperture held no sign of any means of which she could save herself. They only served to suppress her hopes of survival.

Then, suddenly, a ripple of bright blue began to thread its way towards her. As she began to clear the final few yards that would deposit her into the murky acid water, the blue beam cut right in between. She was saved.

So this was the game _she_ was playing now. Or was it simply a message to her reminding her of how things were between them? Chell shakily stood up and began to walk along the bridge of shimmering blue light. She paced herself as she treaded on the makeshift walkway, knowing one careless slip would ship her straight into a painful death.

"**Oh good. You're still alive. You remember that medical procedure I promised you when you were about to finish those tests? The one that would add a few years to your short and miserable life? I really was going to do it, until you went and decided to plot to murder me as you usually do. If you're done inflicting damage onto your already mutilated body, I can still go through with it.**"

Chell examined the room, which thankfully was not bare like the previous one. Her eyes instantly locked onto the exit: her primary goal. Then she watched as a Vital Apparatus Vent deposited a cube before her. She went to retrieve the cube just as a portal device was wheeled up. An orange portal then materialized high up on the wall she was facing, just above a ledge where the cube's receptacle was sure to be. Her course of action already formulated in her mind, she began to move forward…

...

Just beneath the ledge, beyond a strip of paneling that jutted out, he crouched. His right hand whisked briskly across the paneled walls in his makeshift den. He worked furiously on his latest mural while his mind hung idly in thought.

"_You can't do this. You already tried to help her twice. And look where it got you._"

"It got me my freedom. It was my own decision to remain in these walls."

"_Your own _folly. _Please, we can still run away. This is madness._"

If he weren't plagued with fatigue, he would laugh. "You're right. This _is _madness. And I _am_ mad to stay here. But I owe her everything…"

The cube fell silent and seemed to regard him with something like resignation. Then: "_What's that you're painting? It looks like a bird, a bird with orange plumage._"

The weathered-looking man studied his painting as well, adding a few quick strokes of black to form the sharp curve of its beak. He set his brush down in a jug of water and slowly let his fingers trail over the words he had scrawled:

Here the anthem doth commence;

Love and liberty is dead;

Phoenix and the rat has fled

In a mutual flame from hence.

The man swished his brush around in the jug, wiping it against his coat before letting it rest next to the radio. "She is… a phoenix," he said slowly, "whose wings have crumpled. She thinks she cannot fly. But she can. She just needs…"

He watched as the test subject stepped out of a blue portal and strode calmly towards the chamber's exit. "Her spirit is strong and resilient. She's going to fight back. No matter how many times she faces oppression. She's still strong enough to fight that mad AI." Then he fell silent as the computer, who was affectionately dubbed GLaDOS by the very scientists she wanted dead, gave her customary pre-exit monologue.

"**Well done. You managed to be one of the slowest test subjects to complete this test. I know you're itching to murder me, but making me drop dead from the sheer boredom of watching you test in the slowest manner possible **_**isn't **_**going to work. Just so you know.**"

The test subject ignored her again and stepped into the elevator at the bottom of the steps. She felt the lift begin to ascend and grasped her new portal device, thankful to have something familiar in her hands, even if it could only shoot a blue portal. But it was still functional enough to aid her for whatever was to come.

...

The moon was absolutely massive. Its sheer volume made all the components of his body shiver. His blue optic skittered about as he switched from nervously peering at the moon to shakily looking into the deep blackness of space.

For a while, he remained floating listlessly through ribbons of black nothingness. Then he turned a little, his optic spotting another core off into the distance. It was spinning about, its bright yellow optic thrashing madly in its spherical container.

"**Space! Space space space space space. I'm in space. I'm in space. Look look! Space. **

"**Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. Juuuupiter. Uhhhhh. Sssspace. I'm in space. Space. Wait wait wait! Space. That's what I'm in. Space.**"

Oh, _him_.

He turned again, and his blue optic concentrated on another floating entity. Oh yes. This time he had the right one. The one she wanted. The Intelligence Dampening Sphere.


	3. Chapter Three: The Phoenix

_**Portal and all its characters belong to Valve**_

_**Original version with chapter illustrations/original formatting here (minus spaces): **_

_**the-eradication. blogspot. com/2011/12/chapter-three-phoenix. html**_

_**Reviews would be wonderful! I'd love to know what you think. Comments and suggestions are appreciated no matter how harsh, as long as the intent is to help me improve my writing, etc. Because I'm pretty sure it sucks.  
><strong>_

...

_Oh to turn back the time again_

_To sleep away tomorrow_

_To speak, to cry_

_To live, to die_

_Just wash out the pain and sorrow _

_...  
><em>

A soft, inquisitive chirring noise ruined his concentration. He blinked a few times then quickly compared the data she gave him with the analysis of the personality core before him. They matched perfectly. Satisfied with this, he turned and gave a gleeful signal to his companion that phase one of their plan had been a success.

Swiftly, before his target could react, ATLAS grasped one of the core's handles and tugged on him. P-body gave him a few clicks in communication and slowly roped in the string bound to the stout, bipedal robot's "feet".

"Wh-what, what is going on! Who are you?" There was clear desperation in the core's voice as his glowing optic swiveled frantically in its casing. It spun around to glare at ATLAS as he dutifully watched the approaching red portal his partner had thrown onto the rocky surface of the moon.

The large robot began to feel his captive struggling and peered at him anxiously. She told him that he and P-body were to escort this core, this Wheatley person, to his surprise party. She also said he would put up a bit of a fight.

The sphere spun his optic to get a good look at his captor. His reaction was unfortunately worse than his prior struggles.

"Oh no no no no no! No! No! Please no! She's going to kill me, isn't she? She is! She is going to _kill me_! I don't—I don't want to die!"

Again, the robot cast him worried glances. Then he shrugged and tossed him unceremoniously through the portal, before hopping through it himself.

...

"**Excellent work, **_**party escort bots**_**. Don't mind his screaming, it's something he does when he's… excited. He probably can't wait for his… party.**"

Her monotone voice somehow managed to glide over Wheatley's continuous screeching and sobbing, which, as her low laugh echoed through her chamber, abruptly stopped with a deadening hush. The sound of metal being lightly crushed was as audible as the smell of sparks was apparent.

...

He ran wildly along the catwalks as he rushed to the next test chamber. He realized it was foolish to race so fast, especially with him lugging a cube on his back, but time was slipping. Unfortunately, so was he.

"_Watch out!_" The cube's desperate cries were heard too late. The man tripped over the husk of a broken turret and went sprawling over the cold metal of the walkway. "_You okay? Why didn't you see that turret?_"

Rattmann sprang up, dusting off his lab coat. He was no worse for the wear: maybe he added a few new bruises to his collection, but nothing drastically terrible. And fortunately, his cube had only skittered a few yards down the catwalk.

"That… That voice. Do you hear it? Do you hear its screams?"

But the cube only heard the quiet chuckle of a more mechanical voice. "_Do you mean… _her_? The Genetic Lifef—whatever you called it?_"

Rattmann was quiet a moment. Indeed his cube was right. Only GLaDOS's laughter was audible in the back hallways now.

"No… I distinctly heard _his_ voice. You recall him? He was the one who awakened us from cryostasis and fed us those lies about wanting to help us. 'To facilitate our escape,' he said. More like facilitate our deaths.

"It was only luck that saved our lives. This whole place is mad, like some asylum built to harbor our brilliant minds from the outside world. And I thought I was insane."

"_Don't say that, you're not insane. Just crazy to remain here when you were so close to escaping. You're _not_ her guardian angel. And you're _not _immortal._"

"If he's back…"

A sketchy plan began to take form in his mind. Intercept Chell at her next test chamber. Lead her to the back halls and away from _her_. Then… what? Escape somehow, he would figure it out in time. He only knew that he could no longer lurk amongst the shadows and assume the role as a sort of "watcher" over her.

"We'll have to stay quiet. We don't want to be seen or heard…"

...

"**Do you want to hear an interesting quote I found when I went through your species' remarkably short and tedious history? 'An eye for an eye.' It means I'm legally justified in killing you. But you know what? Simply killing your worthless body won't compensate for what you've done to me. So maybe I won't.**"

Chell paused momentarily, trying to shake off those chills that were crawling over her spine. She knew the insane AI had a nasty habit of lying and figured that _she_ must have just delivered a very twisted death threat to her. Well, nothing new there.

Test chamber 17. Icons of cubes and… Wait, high energy pellets? Hadn't she already been to this chamber already?

She cautiously edged through the entrance doors. A cube promptly dropped from its tube. She stared at its heart-emblazoned sides incredulously.

"**You seem a little slow on the uptake so I thought something familiar might reinvigorate your mental… capabilities.**"

Was _she_ trying to guilt-trip her with incinerating the cube again? But that simply wasn't _her_ signature style, so surely something somewhat more sinister awaited her soon.

Chell pushed the cube around to navigate the steep ledges and held it up to ward off the blows from the energy pellet, going through the motions from memory. She failed to see the point in recycling an old test chamber but figured she might as well go along with _her_ plans: what other choice did she really have? She was only a pawn in this game, one to be, at the same time, easily manipulated yet tricky to maneuver.

She easily entered the room with the incinerator and dropped the cube on the large cube receptacle. Surprisingly though, the doors leading to the incinerator activation button didn't slide open. Instead, placing the cube on its receptacle appeared to trigger the mechanism for locking the chamber up and preventing her from backtracking into the previous area.

"**You remember what I said earlier about an eye for an eye? Well, here's your chance to kill the very one who stole your parents' lives. That's right. The one who made you adopted in the first place. And I have him here.**"

A panel opened up on the ceiling. A metal claw began to slip out from the hole, suspending a spherical metal construction.

"Oh no! Please—please don't tell her about the neurotoxin that I—" The core spun to face Chell. Its bright blue optic seemed to retract with fear.

"Oh god, it's _you_. Look, I—I know I was absolutely horrible to you. I made you do all those tests and may have accidentally tried to sort-of-but-not-really murder you. Horribly. But come on! I'm a—a very defensive sort of person, alright? I thought you were trying to kill me. So I sort of tried to… kill you back. You know… like self-defense. Yes. Self-defense, that's what it was… Anyway, the point is I am really, truly, honestly sorr—"

A metal grinding interrupted him. Chell could only stare as the claw grasping Wheatley's small body began to crush him.

"**Oops. Well, you never listened to me when I was trying to keep up a conversation with you, so I didn't think there was a point in letting him finish.**"

The claw dropped the misshapen core at her feet and returned behind the panel. The doors to the activation button slid open as well.

Chell stared uncertainly down at the unconscious Wheatley, before carefully stepping over his body and continuing on through the doors. She pressed the button and hastily went to retrieve the cube to "euthanize" it. But the second her fingers flew over the cube's surface, it disintegrated into sparks.

She stepped back, startled. Now how was she supposed to…?

"Throw him in!"

A voice. Whispers. But whose?

"Make haste! Before the incinerator closes!"

Automatically, she bent to grasp the personality sphere's broken body and pitched him into the incinerator just as its doors began to slide shut. The exit doors promptly opened, and instead of some snide insult jabbing at her physical well-being or parental figures was the quiet sound of mechanical laughter.

"Get behind the panel to your right!"

Chell obeyed the voice's command instantly and found herself in a narrow passageway. It was dimly lit by a faltering ceiling light that flickered every so often. She took a single step forward and suddenly lurched to the side. Either the stress of testing had finally taken its toll, or _she_ had stopped supplying her body with adrenaline. Whichever it was, she felt this heavy weight of fatigue crushing her.

"Are you alright? Chell?"

Hearing her name being spoken seemed to channel some of her previous alertness back into her. She glanced up, which turned out to be a pretty terrible idea. She stared into a face, a face she knew too well. Those wild eyes… That untamed hair…

She was staring into the face of the past, something she wasn't entirely sure she appreciated so much. She tried to speak… Something to try and communicate her shock, but all that came out was a hoarse cough. Maybe something non-verbal?

But before she could do anything else, she lost consciousness. The last thing she recalled was a low voice saying: "So the phoenix has risen from its ashes… at last."


End file.
